Martha in Paris Read online

  “Poor Nils!” giggled Sally—rousing and sitting up in a seductive froth of black silk frills. “Don’t you think we ought just to see if he’s sick or something?”

  “No,” said Martha firmly—sitting up too, in her white cotton pup-tent. “If he wants an Alka-Seltzer it’s on the mantelpiece.—If you want the Alka-Seltzer,” called Martha rather loudly, “it’s on the mantelpiece downstairs.”

  Nils mumblingly withdrew. His idea had been to persuade both girls out to hear non-existent nightingales, and then separate them, and then subsequently, ideally, leave Martha his own narrow couch to spend the rest of the night on. The suggestion of Alka-Seltzer quenched his ardour as effectively as though the imaged fizzing glass had been a douche of holy-water: the transition from Alka-Seltzer to nightingales was beyond his powers to achieve—particularly as he heard, at that moment, Madame Paule stirring also. Madame Paule in fact caught up with him on the landing. “Is one suffering?” enquired Madame Paule rather nastily. “Or does one merely walk in one’s sleep?”—Loyal even to a paysagiste, Martha shouted that Nils just wanted the Alka-Seltzer for an upset stomach. “I will give him something better than that!” cried Madame Paule, at once reassured and interested. “Descend, descend, Monsieur Nils!”

  Evidently Nils descended.

  “D’you suppose she’s holding his nose?” whispered Sally.

  “I hope so,” said Martha grimly, “and I hope it keeps him quiet.” If there was one thing she needed, it was her sleep.

  Nils appeared peculiarly pale next morning. He looked purged. Whether his nose had been held or not, he recognized Martha and Madame Paule between them too much for him; and gave up.

  4

  Thus Sally was deposited back in Paris her virginity still intact: her finger still apt, if she chose to wear one, for an engagement-ring. Nils looked like a rag. (Martha’s eye rested on him contemptuously. Though it was undoubtedly her own presence that had so reduced him, all Martha felt for Nils was contempt. He should have been more serious.)

  She herself brought back one drawing that almost satisfied her. It was in fact masterly, and some years later to fetch a surprising price. But the most important thing she brought back, from that Easter excursion, was the reassurance that she’d done rightly in jettisoning Eric Taylor. However little he mattered, it was just possible that as his child quickened in her womb Martha might have turned to him again; but having observed how even a lightly-played sex-game threw even a paysagiste off his stride—caused Nils to waste day after day of good painting-weather—Martha returned fortified against any such weakness. Upon sex triumphant and entrenched in domesticity she knew she must forever turn her back.

  “Mother Bunch,” cajoled Sally, as Nils halted the car in the rue de Vaugirard, “tell me you’re glad you came?”

  “Yes, I am,” said Martha, “and thank you very much.”

  It never occurred to her that Sally’s father was so rich he could have subsidized a show in New York for his daughter’s friend. Certain obvious short-cuts to fame never were to occur to Martha. She just turned over the one drawing that almost satisfied her to le maître, and when he looked at it in silence—digging his large, big-knuckled, freckled hand ever more and more heavily into her scruff—merely felt that at least she hadn’t been wasting her time.

  Though her time, in another and older sense, was obviously approaching, Martha re-entered the studio for the summer term rather high-stomached.—Again, how apposite the old phrase!

  Chapter Thirteen

  Healthy as a milkmaid, untroubled by guilt, Martha carried her child with off-hand ease. Her smocks disguised her increasing girth, and a slight pugginess of feature marred no beauty where none had been: as for the old dictum of eating enough for two, Martha always had. Madame Dubois noticed no change in her, nor Angèle; to her fellow-students, wasn’t she already Mother Bunch? Both physically and socially Martha was in fact so fortunately circumstanced, she could and did give all her mind to the new term’s work.

  Her palette was still drab, but she employed a slightly fuller brush. “Continuez!” said le maître.

  After the day a new life quickened within her body, however, even Martha had to pause and consider her immediate, non-professional prospects.

  Working the dates out as nearly as she could, she thought it would be about the end of August.

  Which again was fortunate: not in mid-term. On the other hand, if she gave birth at Richmond during the summer vacation there was the shot-gun angle, while if she gave birth in the rue de Vaugirard Angèle would undoubtedly make a nuisance of herself and possibly want to be godmother. Martha for once directed all her attention to a purely, physically, personal problem; and in the end wrote a second longish letter home.

  DEAR AUNT DOLORES [wrote Martha]:

  I have the opportunity to spend the summer holiday with that very good sketching-party at that village I told you about. It is such a very good opportunity I feel I ought not to miss it. If you tell Mr. Joyce I am sure he will agree. The cost this time will be about sixty pounds, but saving my keep at home, also the fare. Of course I shall be very sorry not to see you all, but it really is a very good opportunity.

  Yours affec.,

  MARTHA

  Martha read it through and thought again—now looking even further into the future; and after a full half-hour’s consideration added the postscript that was to bring her kind Aunt Dolores so much joy.

  P.S., scrawled Martha, after that I am coming home for good, because—

  Here she stopped to consider afresh—though this time for no longer than it took the ink to dry.

  —because I am missing you so much, finished Martha, I don’t want another year in Paris.

  2

  “Darling, read this!” cried Dolores, over the Richmond breakfast-table. “It’s from Martha! And—oh, Harry!—she’s coming home!”

  Harry Gibson, in the act of cracking an egg, paused.

  “She always was coming home,” he pointed out.

  “For the summer—but now she means for good!” cried Dolores joyfully. “For the summer she wants to join that sketching-party again; she means afterwards. Instead of another year in Paris! Isn’t it wonderful?”

  Now in the act of buttering a roll, Harry paused again; his brow rather darkened. If Dolores was the most important person in his life, so that anything that made her happy made him happy too, Mr. Joyce was the second most important; and what would Mr. Joyce say, to this casual sabotaging of his two-year plan? Friendship apart, Mr. Joyce was the Gibsons’ economic mainstay; Harry had every reason in the world not to risk biting, even vicariously, the hand that fed him …

  “Harry! Don’t you want Martha back?” cried Dolores reproachfully.

  “Of course I want her back. I’m very fond of Martha,” said Harry loyally. “But old Joyce meant her to stay a couple of years, and I don’t know how he’ll like it.”

  “You know as well as I do she can twist him round her finger. We just don’t have to interfere!” countered Dolores.

  The rider was unnecesary. In any direct encounter between Martha and her patron Harry would as soon have thought of interfering as he’d have thought of interfering between the horns of locked buffaloes; also his money would be on Martha.

  “She’ll make it all right with Mr. Joyce, I’m sure she will!” promised Dolores confidently. “Oh, Harry, do be pleased!”

  “If you’re pleased, that’s enough for me,” said loyal Harry.

  3

  All through that day, however—in the intervals of selling one musquash coat, undertaking repairs to another and the remodelling of a fox-fur stole—Harry Gibson continued to feel uneasy. He didn’t know exactly why; it was after all Martha’s funeral, and as has been said he had every confidence in her ability to handle it. But at luncheon as again at dinner he found it hard to match his wife’s happy smiles with any appropriately joyful expression. Nor was it only the thought of Mr. Joyce’s possible displeasure that bothered him; t
here was something more.

  Late that night—in fact in the small hours of the morning—the big double bed creaked as he turned and woke. Beside him three blankets and a quilt padded Dolores’ bony hip almost to voluptuousness; but he didn’t disturb her. He lay and thought about Martha.

  Addressing himself more or less to the ceiling—

  “Why’s she want to come home?” mused Harry.

  Unexpectedly, Dolores answered. She hadn’t been asleep either.

  “You never read her letter, darling. She does miss me after all!”

  “So she should,” said Harry—but more as one stating a desideratum than a fact.

  “And I’m so glad,” murmured Dolores, out of her own private but happier thoughts, “because although I always tried to do my best for her—”

  “You were an angel,” said Harry warmly.

  “—she never showed much affection. Sometimes it hurt,” admitted Dolores, “but if she’s willing to give up a year in Paris, just because she misses me, I know every sacrifice was worth while.”

  With connubial familiarity she turned to insert her feet between the warmth of Harry’s calves. It was nice. Even under three blankets and a quilt Dolores’ feet had a trick of staying cold, but it was still nice. Harry lay several moments thinking what a lucky chap he was, before the question of Martha’s homecoming bothered him again.

  He didn’t know why, but he smelt something—fishy. His wife’s happy explanation hadn’t convinced him. Undoubtedly Martha ought to be missing so kind (and self-sacrificing) an aunt; but all Harry’s experience of her made it seem unlikely. That she had her own good reasons for abandoning a second year in Paris he didn’t doubt for a moment; but he was dashed if he believed they were sentimental ones …

  Thus he lay staring up at the ceiling with his original question still unanswered.—Though he had no glimmering of the truth, Harry Gibson face to face with Martha might just possibly have got it out of her, simply by rejecting her paper-explanation outright and blundering about until he blundered upon the right track. But Martha was in Paris and Harry Gibson at Richmond, and they weren’t to meet for the next three months; so Martha had nothing to fear from her Uncle Harry.

  She was in fact due for a severer, an expert cross-examination. Upon Mr. Joyce the retailed gladsome news acted more positively. Mr. Joyce nipped over to Paris within the next twenty-four hours.

  Chapter Fourteen

  His appearance in the rue de Vaugirard, where he arrived unheralded just in time to take Martha out to dinner, considerably fluttered both Madame Dubois and Angèle and slightly dismayed even Martha. Unlike her nervous hostesses—Madame apprehensive of being charged with inefficacy as a duenna, Angèle more insanely fearful of a rebuke for having attempted to send him a match-box cover—Martha guessed accurately why Mr. Joyce had come; and recognizing in him the only person with a right to question her, while washing her hands attempted to think of a few acceptable answers.—During this interval, indeed, Mr. Joyce by his calm demeanour and pleasant conversation quite succeeded, if unconsciously, in allaying every fear he had as unconsciously aroused, in the bosoms of Madame and Angèle; but Martha stumped out after him still uneasy …

  They gained the restaurant of his choice in complete silence. Martha had never learned the art of making small-talk, and Mr. Joyce was too rich to need to. Not until they were settled at table—(the attentions of head- and wine-waiter briefly acknowledged; the menu swiftly and expertly chosen)—did Martha’s patron open fire.

  2

  “Now please tell me what is all this,” ordered Mr. Joyce, “about wishing to leave the studio.—For I may say at once that your tale of missing a kind Auntie the old man does not for a moment believe.”

  Martha pushed about the six snail-shells on her plate. The hand-washing interval hadn’t been long enough; and she was never quick-witted.

  “Didn’t Aunt Dolores believe it?” she asked cautiously.

  “Naturally she did. Your Aunt Dolores is a very simple and affectionate woman. But I am not simple at all,” stated Mr. Joyce, “also I have put money into you; and therefore I repeat the question.”

  To gain time, Martha extracted the largest snail and chewed. It tasted like india-rubber.—Unlike many other persons who remark on this, Martha actually had, and quite frequently, chewed india-rubber.

  “I don’t see why I shouldn’t miss an aunt like anyone else,” she harked back sulkily.

  “Only you are not like anyone else. You are an artist,” said Mr. Joyce. “If you tell me you have been crying into your pillow, again I shall not believe. Continue.”

  “That’s what le maître says,” offered Martha—as it were seizing a red herring by the tail. “It means he’s pleased with me.”

  “All the more reason why you should continue with him,” countered Mr. Joyce.

  Martha swallowed.

  “Only he’s no good for paysage—and I never told you,” plunged Martha, and it was the measure of her desperation, “but now I want to paint landscape …”

  3

  Mr. Joyce sat back and looked at Martha’s plate. The restaurant of his choice, besides being famous for its food, was exquisitely sited. The view from the window by which they sat included the Île St. Louis breasting the Seine like a galleon in full sail. Martha had never looked out; but on her plate the one big empty snail-shell now lodged in proper relation with the five lesser ones to form a six-fold pattern of helices …

  “Since when?” enquired Mr. Joyce.

  “Well, since that sketching-party I went on,” said Martha.

  “From which you brought back a drawing of a kitchen-stove,” recalled Mr. Joyce. “I admit it was a good drawing—”

  “How did you see it?” asked Martha, surprised.

  “It was sent me,” said Mr. Joyce repressively, “and what a disappointment! No light, no colour, nothing the old man had hoped for, from your famous sketching-party!—Nice, ain’t they?” pounced Mr. Joyce, his eye on Martha’s plate.

  “Yes,” said Martha eagerly. “Can I have them?”

  “You can,” said Mr. Joyce, “but still the less am I fooled. Here we sit where if you looked through the window you would see Notre Dame and the Île St. Louis, also a remarkable evening light: you prefer to observe snail-shells. All right, very well, I have nothing against snail-shells! Only do not tell me in the same breath that you now wish to paint landscape, because the old man is not such a fool as he may look.”

  Martha sighed. She had always recognized in her patron an intelligence able to meet, encourage, or as now to combat, her own.

  “Actually I don’t particularly want to paint landscape,” reneged Martha—casting aside the odious cloak of a paysagiste indeed not without relief.

  “Aha!” said Mr. Joyce. “Now perhaps we are getting somewhere!—Le maître is pleased with you, you do not wish to paint landscape, still you wish to return to England,” checked Mr. Joyce. He paused, baffled as Harry Gibson had been; but unlike Harry Gibson tracked his uneasiness to its source. It had always been his greatest fear that Martha might hobble her career by an early marriage; especially with Martha sitting opposite him, nothing less serious now entered his mind—her portly and consequential aspect put the frivolity of a mere passade too thoroughly out of court …

  “Are you going to tell me there is some young man?” demanded Mr. Joyce.

  4

  In the moment before she answered he found himself absolutely holding his breath. Martha had flushed scarlet—or more accurately, beetroot-colour; and while Mr. Joyce had more than once seen her so flushed before—either with rage (her Aunt Dolores blocking Martha’s view of the kitchen-stove), or from the effort of three hours’ drawing without a break, or merely (as when he’d bullied her into going to Paris in the first place) under the lash of sarcasm—Mr. Joyce recognized it as possible that Martha might now in fact be blushing. Her negative ferocious growl so relieved him, he tossed off a glass of excellent Montrachet without tasting it.
>
  “No,” growled Martha, with convincing fury; and while her patron still took a breather at last discovered a sufficient argument that in its way contained a truth.

  “If you want to know—” began Martha.

  “Naturally I want to know!” snapped Mr. Joyce.

  “Well, I’m tired of being taught,” stated Martha. “At home, there won’t be any one to teach me.”

  Again Mr. Joyce sat back. The arrogance if anything rather pleased him; also, when he considered the pressures to which she had been subjected during the past ten months, it struck him that perhaps Martha knew very well what she was about.—“Lie a year fallow,” thought Mr. Joyce, “and only then back to Paris!”

  “That at last I understand,” said Mr. Joyce, “too much of being taught. Maybe you have been pressed too hard; maybe you know best.—Who am I,” asked Mr. Joyce, with a genuine, rare humility Martha was still too callow to appreciate, “to say yes or no to you? But why not have told the old man outright?”

  “I didn’t want to seem ungrateful,” said Martha virtuously, “when you’ve been paying for me in Paris.”

  5

  The meal ended in great cordiality. Mr. Joyce didn’t let Martha drink too much (which in her condition was just as well), but fed her to happy repletion (which was just what her condition required), also procured for her from the head-waiter a bag of snail-shells to take home. “Now we shall see nothing but drawings of snail-shells,” complained Mr. Joyce, “but at least a change from the kitchen-stove!—Also remember I am to have the pick.”